Glenorchy sits at the northern end of Lake Wakatipu. Photo: RNZ / Tess Brunton
Glenorchy residents are grappling with how to protect their community from flooding and liquefaction.
A report showed the Otago settlement and head of Lake Wakatipu area is vulnerable to flooding and liquefaction during an earthquake - when soils acts more like a liquid than a solid.
Officials have been holding public meetings to help the community to work out what they can and want to do.
Otago Regional Council natural hazards manager Jean-Luc Payan said there were no simple solutions but there were plenty of options on the table.
"Those options range from intervention options to protect or accommodate, meaning that, for example, an existing house can be modified to accommodate what could come - a flood or a change, to down the line of relocation, maybe in some areas, or avoid, avoiding new development."
Work started in 2019 to understand the hazards, the scale of the issues, and how best to deal with them.
Many of the solutions were expected to be costly and it was either unclear who would foot the bill or it would fall back onto ratepayers or property owners.
Some of them could involve changing where people could build and avoiding areas where there were more significant hazard risks, and setting new rules for building resilience, possibly including minimum floor levels, ground improvement and flood proofing.
Otago Regional Council, Queenstown Lakes District Council and Emergency Management Otago staff walked the community through the potential solutions, their pros and cons, during meetings on Thursday.
Jean-Luc Payan hoped they would help the community work out what it wanted to do.
"Understanding the range of intervention that can be done but also understanding the constraint associated with them. Some of them would be quite expensive, some of them will take a long time to be implemented."
Officials outnumbered locals at a Thursday night meeting in Glenorchy but those who went said they were glad they did.
Lighthorse Adventures owner Lynetta Schionning has been living in the area for nearly five years and said she has noticed erosion eating into their tracks and into the side of the river.
The changing river was part of what attracted her and continued to entice visitors to the area.
Schionning wanted to hear possible solutions to the erosion and flooding risks.
"I'd like to see a little bit less fear-mongering in some of the other areas of this meeting and really knowing what we have done already to mitigate things like liquefaction in our foundations before we go running around trying to move a town.
She lives next to the river on the floodplain, but said she would not want to live anywhere else and wanted the risks to be managed as best they could.
"So make sure we just understand the risks that we have, safe measures for humans and animals in the event of an incident rather than try to block off the area, which I would be really opposed to.
"I wouldn't want to not live here. I wouldn't want to not be able to build here. I'd want to make sure we have good plans in place."
Otago Regional Council said in the case of Kinloch Road, it typically closed due to flooding multiple times a year - and, due to river movement as well as increased erosion and flooding, that was expected to increase.
But work is currently being carried out and is ongoing to ensure access on the road.
Local business owner Toni Glover left with unanswered questions.
"How do we get out? How do we bring in goods and food, and what do we do if the road's out and we can't get to anywhere like Queenstown? Will there be a boat that will actually get us there? Are those heli routes or air routes available?
Glover relied on Kinloch Road for access to some of her businesses.
She said a lot of money had been spent to keep the road open.
"Is it a reality to actually keep preserving the road? I think we need to be looking at alternatives. The lake doesn't need the infrastructure that a road does to maintain so therefore is money better spent with new wharves?"
Long-term resident Elaine Kirkland wanted more support and education for the many tourists who visit the area.
"If we get isolated when they're all about, whether they've walked the Routeburn Track or they've driven out from Queenstown or whatever, and suddenly they can't get to wherever they need to go, that's an issue."
The Otago Regional Council has started work on a new social and economic impact study to work out what it could mean for the community, businesses and the wider region.
It will help to inform a new strategy to help them mitigate or adapt to the risks, expected to be ready next June.
Payan said some of the options would take more time to investigate, design and implement.
An earlier version of this story incorrectly attributed comments about the closure of Kinloch Road due to flooding to business owner Toni Glover. The story has been corrected and that information attributed to the Otago Regional Council with additional context about ongoing work to ensure the road remains open.
